"Kroma" wrote in message
...
To summarise, I have the following... A 'brass' master socket in the
lounge - seems to work fine.
A brass secondary socket in the dining room - seems to work fine.
An 'unconnected' socket in the hallway (the one I was planning to wire
in).
A brass secondary socket in the main bedroom. Works ok with new BT
Paragon
phone but not with old BT Freeway Cordless (which calls out etc but
doesn't
want to ring).
A plug in extension in the study which behaves the same way as the socket
it
is plugged into (in the main bedroom).
There is also an alarm system which is capable of connecting to the
phoneline. I'm not sure where this fits in to the equation - maybe it's
what's causing the problem 'between floors'?
Should I get someone in to check the system over? I had a quick look
behind
the faceplate of the main bedroom socket - it was a complete mess with
wires
everywhere (and the brass faceplate was not earthed as far as I could
see).
It was also installed upside-down!
Is this something which I should get BT to come and sort out. If not,
what
sort of person do I look for?

Phew - a month later (if anybody can remember what was said before)...

I plucked up courage to sort out the phone sockets this week.

I changed the faceplates downstairs (very easy, used the special tool in the
lounge and had to strip away to bare wire for the dining room extension as
it had screw terminals).

Then I installed my 'midway phone socket' - once again it was the screw
terminal variety - I couldn't get proper ones anywhere! It worked a treat -
no shocks (even when my gf phoned halfway through... I wish I HAD put a
phone on the master socket off hook at that point)!

I also replaced the nasty brass socket upstairs but found some oddities
here...

The colouring was reversed when compared with the sockets downstairs.. white
with blue rings became blue with white rings etc.

There were also 2 extra wires, an orange and a white in positions 2 and 5.
There was also a bundle of other wires which didn't go anywhere (so I taped
the ends up).

Everything works now (except my old cordless still won't ring when connected
upstairs although my new phone will). Also, if I turn off the power to the
upstairs electric sockets - the upstairs extension goes dead.

I assume the colour change has something to do with the way it's connected
to the alarm?

Anyway, thanks for helping everybody. I was very naive at the start of this
thread having just read back!

Daz